Ranjit Hoskote

A Poem For Grandmother - Poem by Ranjit Hoskote

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A door. A stair. And two steps inside that dark,the straight-backed chair my grandmother sat in,a lace net draped across its mahogany arm.And on the table, a volume of storiesopen at the flyleaf, its tissue quill-scarred.

The photographs seal her in a shell of relations:the sepia corset would have her no morethan an empress delegating domestic chores;in this room, imagine her gravely acceptingtributes of porcelain and sparkling brassor setting tiger lilies afloat in bowls, or stockingpots of pickled mango in the attic of summer.

But the wrong word kills, and empress is wrong,an acrid graft on a delicate stock. Empirewas never her creed: grandmother had to learnthe principles of governance from practised hands.She had to whet the brusque words of commandon waspish crones in the inner courtyard,had to tame the peacocks in the gardenand dry the raisins of tact with aunts-in-law,invalids who ruled from brass-bound chestsand serene beds of illness.

She grew up with her children, kept housein a city of merchant ships and parade-ground strife,made a home in the rain-gashed heartof that world in whose lanes stowaway Chinese sangthe praises of their silk, and coolies peddledcartloads of spices plucked for colder ports.Like the poets of that city, she wrote in two languages,spoke a third in polite company, the lines enjambedover the trellises, the words trapped in porous stone.

She died giving birth to a daughteron Armistice Day, 1931.She grew into the earth, then, a storied fig treewhose roots shot to heaven and branches burrowedso deep they seeded a forest.

Giving consumed grandmother. Connected to herby nothing more substantial than a spiralled threadof protein, I wake some nights to find her eyesstaring at me from the mirror:grandmother when she died, younger than I am now,cut in half by the streetlight's glare.

Hoard your powers, she says, do not givefrom the core, my son, do not give.Giving spites the flesh, corrodes intention.Most unreliable of barters, most memorable of sins,giving kills. My son, do not, like Karna,rip off the armour that is your skin.